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Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. LLC (TGP) has signed a binding, 20-year firm transportation precedent agreement with Mitsubishi Corp. of Japanto ship 600,000 Dth/d of natural gas earmarked for the proposed Cameron LNG liquefaction facility in Hackberry, LA, which is slated to begin liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports in the second half of 2017. Mitsubishi will serve as the foundation shipper for TGP’s Southwest Louisiana Supply Project, which is designed to provide transportation from various supply basins in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Louisiana to Cameron Interstate Pipeline, which connects directly to the Cameron LNG Terminal. Kinder does not own Cameron Interstate Pipeline or the Cameron LNG facility. Sempra Energy, Mitsubishi and Mitsui & Co. Ltd. recently signed 20-year tolling capacity and joint venture agreements for the terminal (see Daily GPI, May 17). “TGP’s unique footprint, connecting key conventional and shale supply areas from the South Texas Eagle Ford to the Utica and Marcellus in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and access to the Haynesville Shale supply area and the Perryville Hub in Louisiana, makes our Southwest Louisiana Supply Project an ideal fit to serve the future supply needs of Mitsubishi Corp. and the planned Cameron LNG complex,” said TGP President Kimberly Watson.

Rapid City, SD-based Black Hills Corp. will sell its 40 MW natural gas-fired “CT II” generation unit at its mostly coal-fired Gillette Energy Complex in Wyoming to the City of Gillette for $22 million.

Physical gas prices were mostly down Tuesday except for in the Northeast, where traders dug in and bought necessary volumes to see them through late-season cold and a series of storms.

Hoping to head off threats of a state moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (fracking), Illinois state legislative, oil/natural gas industry and environmental leaders on Thursday announced agreement on a bipartisan bill (HB 2615) establishing rules on the use of the contested well stimulation practice.

The pace of drilling in Pennsylvania has declined by 35% in the first month and a half of 2013 compared to the same period in 2012, but counties rich in liquids and oil are faring better.

Another proposal has emerged in the North Dakota state legislature seeking to eliminate exemptions from the state’s current one-year limit for oil production wells flaring associated natural gas.

Denver-based PDC Energy Inc. has sold its Piceance and other mostly natural gas Colorado holdings to concentrate its drilling efforts in the Utica Shale in Ohio, along with Weld County’s Wattenberg field in Colorado.

Raymond James & Associates Inc. on Tuesday revised upward its 2013 U.S. natural gas production forecast to average about 66.8 Bcf/d, up 1.3 Bcf/d from a previous forecast, mostly because Marcellus Shale output has not declined, while associated gas from oil drilling is only adding to the surplus.

A decision by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to set aside its original federal hydraulic fracturing (fracking) proposal has drawn plaudits from associations representing major oil and natural gas producers.